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Topic: Painting Reference/Help Thread (Read 3220 times)

I just did my first painting ever. I wanted to try a few Tac Ops paint jobs on the #41s so I picked up some acrylic paint at Walmart. I see mention above of sealing with clear paint. Does it render this stuff significantly more permanent? Because this stuff I bought seems about as permanent as cheese spead. As soon as I moved the joints, the paint started coming off easily.

And to answer your question - I wouldn't say that after you seal your figures you won't get any paint loss from scratching, but it will cut down on it significantly. And I'll just repeat what's been said a few times on this board by a few people - I know Gregorbian has told a few people this. The paints you buy at the craft stores and at Wal*Mart are good, but when you are painting figures and other items that are going to be handled more than a little bit, you are better off buying a more quality paint. I tend to like the Citadel brand, as well as some of the acrilyics from Tamiya. Both companies make paints that are meant to be used to paint model kits and metal miniatures, so they are able to withstand a little bit of wear and tear from handling (or from movement of joints and such). They are a little more expensive than the craft store paints - they are generally around $3 for a small bottle - but in my opinion (and many others) the results definitely justify the price.

There are a few ways you can get straight lines while painting. You can use tape to mask the areas (like you did for the "i" part in the middle of the chest armor) or you can do what I like to do and just clean up the areas with a sharp exacto knife after the paint has dried. Again, using the paints that I suggested above will give you a better finish, especially if you go with my method of scraping the excess paint away to create straight lines. The craft store paints tend to chip a lot when trying to do this. They also don't really agree with the masking method as well as the other paints do either.

As for the figure, I'd say it's a pretty good first attempt at painting a clone. The part that you masked off in the middle of the armor came out really nice and straight, if you would have done that for the rest of the figure it would have come out better IMO. One of the toughtest parts (to me at least) is getting the paint right on the helmet near the center where the raised part is. It's so hard for me to get the helmet painted without getting any paint on the raised part. That's where I use my exacto knife for some cleaning up on a regular basis.

I did use a toothpick to scrape some paint away. I figured it would scrape the paint but not the plastic. I will definitely look into the quality paints. Someone also suggested sealing acrylic with Testors dull coat. I'll look into that, too. (We already discussed that above...) As far as taping off the rest of the areas, I figured it would be too hard to tape an arcing line like on the chest area. Thanks for the tips, guys.

I also want to drill a hole thru the bugger and make him the clone that gets run thru by Yoda! Saw some sweet cusotms on RS.

As far as taping off the rest of the areas, I figured it would be too hard to tape an arcing line like on the chest area.

Easy way around that problem. Place a larger piece of tape over the entire chest area, and then cut a straight line in the pattern you want to paint. Peel off the extra tape and just leave behind the piece you need.